I believe his exact quote was:

""" Sometimes I get criticism for, ‘why are you using combustion in rockets and you have electric cars’. There isn’t some way to make an electric rocket. I wish there was. But in the long-term, you can use solar power to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, combine it with water, and produce fuel and oxygen for the rocket. """

That Musk is no Tom Swift. Tom even had an electric rifle, not just a flamethrower.

which he used to great advantage in colonizing Africa

The difference is in the timeframes for capture and replacement - with coal it is millions of years, and with wood it is years. That means burning coal releases carbon which was trapped millions of years ago, and it would take millions of years to trap equivalent amounts of carbon with the formation of new replacement coal deposits. Burning wood on the other hand releases carbon that has been trapped within our lifetime, and it is easy to replace with new trees grown in our lifetime. Bear in mind that if we reverse millions of years of carbon capture we would revert the atmosphere to what it was like millions of years ago, and time travellers visiting that era are likely to need breathing equipment.

Our biology and our biosphere are not adapted to the atmospheric CO2 levels we would have if we burned all the fossil fuels.

Nope. You're emitting exactly the same CO2.

Want to be green? Burn less. Changing your point of view won't lessen CO2 emissions. Burning less carbon will.

It’s also fine to burn fossil fuels if you can make long-term carbon sinks from other processes, hence people caring about making carbon-rich rocks or whether dead plankton floats our sinks.

It’s a question of being responsible for the consequences of actions, not outright banning those actions before the alternatives have been deployed at scale.

Nobody is worrying about CO2 on geological timescales. It is simply not relevant to any discussion anyone is having, or any problem anyone is trying to solve.

This isn't complicated? How are you managing to miss the point with such vigour?

I could ask the same of you - how are you helping matters at all by chopping down a tree and burning it over digging up a tree and burning it? You're emitting the same amount of CO2.

Want to reduce global warming?

1. plant a tree

2. burn less

If you're wondering what to do with the tree after it grows, you can:

1. use it for lumber

2. bury it

Neither makes the situation BETTER. But one makes it WORSE.